by Lex Sinclair
‘No,’ Kate said. ‘Just toot the horn.’
Tom blasted the car horn and watched Charles, Carlton, Derek and Rhian wave them farewell in the rear view mirror, becoming indistinct figure before finally disappearing. He prayed he never saw Carlton or Charles ever again.
***
They drove past the sloping white mountains, as they coasted down the meandering road, tyres churning over the powder. Tom required maxim concentration, because although the roads had been covered in grit, they were still slippery. In his mind he kept picturing the corpse lying in the rear of the car at this very moment. He tried not to conjure up that horrible image, but whenever he applied pressure on the brakes, he could hear it sliding and bumping around.
When they finally got on to a straight road, he steered to the side and brought the car to a halt; put the hazard lights on and rested his brow on the steering wheel.
‘What’s the matter?’
He wanted to ignore the asinine question. Tom wished he was alone right now. “What’s the matter?”’ he mocked, amazed by his wife’s idiotic question.
Kate frowned. She didn’t like his tone of voice. ‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong, Kate. We got ourselves a dead body sliding back and forth in the boot of our car because you are so naïve you believed some old farts’ story about a Jesus-like person, who was allegedly killed and then found in a block of ice - that’s what’s fuckin’ wrong!’
‘I know it doesn’t seem right,’ she said, raising her voice, ‘and under normal circumstances it wouldn’t be. But these aren’t normal circumstances. We are doing this to save ourselves. Charles explained the situation lots of times.
Weren’t you listening?’
Tom slapped the dashboard, hard. ‘Goddamn it, Kate! Since when have you listened to some old guy instead of your own intuition? This is nuts. This is fuckin’ absurd! That’s what it is.’ He knew Kate had been captivated by the tale; but there was more to it than being merely taken in to believing a story.
‘You’re like a completely different person,’ he said.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘What I mean is, you’d never have even considered doing something so idiotic before this weekend. It’s like that pub and those people have clouded your judgement or somethin’.’
‘Now who’s being naïve, Tom?’
‘YOU!’ he shouted. The corded veins on his neck protruded like cords. Kate leapt. She hadn’t expected Tom to yell. He hardly ever yelled at the top of his voice. ‘Look,’ he said, trying to calm himself, ‘why don’t we just dump this body on the side of the road so someone else will notice it and phone the police?
That’s a lot more rational than what you’re suggesting we do. And it would be better for all of us. Trust me. Please.’
Kate shook her head at him. Her face expressed deep aggravation. ‘You are not dumping that body, just because you can have your own way just like you always do.’
Tom clenched his fists, gritted his teeth, trying in vain to abate his anger.
‘Kate,’ he hissed, ‘this isn’t about you and me. This is about morals: about understanding the rudimentary sense of right and wrong. And right now, despite your beliefs, what we are doing is wrong. Trust me.’
‘In other words your beliefs are more important than mine. That’s it, isn’t it?’
He clambered out of the car and slammed the door. Kate did the same and met him at the boot. Tom’s face flushed scarlet. His eyes bulged out of their sockets, glistening in the sunlight. ‘Kate, get out of the way. Let me do this now for both of our sakes. Please.’
‘No, Tom,’ she said. ‘This time I’m gonna have my way for once.’
Tom felt as though he was about to explode with pure rage. His wife’s recalcitrance would certainly get them both locked up for a very long time, all because she wasn’t considering what she was doing seriously. Kate stood steadfast in front of the boot, blocking the keyhole, preventing her husband access so he could open the lid.
‘Kate,’ he cried, ‘just get out of the way! I’m trying to help us.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, without an ounce of sorrow. ‘I can’t allow you to. The only way you’ll accomplish what you want is if you throw my over the precipice.’
Palpitation caused Tom to breathe in short sharp, harsh gasps. If he didn’t placate himself soon he would probably collapse in the road and have an anxiety attack. He whirled away from his wife. He focused on inhaling and exhaling, slowly. As he did this, in the distance he spotted a vehicle, gleaming under the resplendent sun, climbing the incline, heading directly towards them.
The vehicle was white with a blue beacon on top. It looked like a police patrol car, although he was not sure. Yet the nearer it drew, the more obvious it was that Tom’s initial guess had been accurate.
‘Police!’ he cried, so Kate could hear him.
Kate whirled and saw that he wasn’t lying. She cussed under her breath. ‘Act natural,’ she told Tom, who didn’t seem to hear her. It was too late, anyway.
The patrol car rolled to a stop alongside them. Tom wasn’t sure how to react. It was easy to tell someone to act natural, but to do it in a stressful situation which he found himself in right now was easier said than done.
The policeman behind the wheel was alone. His neatly cut black hair fluttered in the wind. He had a clean-shaved youthful visage and couldn’t have been any older than thirty-five. Yet there was an erudite aura emanating from him that made him appear older and more experienced. Tom opened his hands. If the officer saw him with clenched fists he would become immediately suspicious.
‘Are you okay, sir?’ the officer asked.
Tom nodded. He cleared his throat before answering. ‘Yeah. We’re just taking a break.’
The officer frowned. ‘A break from what exactly?’
Tom laughed. There was no amusement in his laugh just a terrible nervousness. ‘We’ve got to drive home to Hereford. Usually in any other conditions it would take about half a day. But with the way things are, my wife and I decided we would get out and stretch our legs and have a coffee. Neither of us slept very well in last night, so some coffee should perk us up.’
‘I thought you might have had car trouble,’ the officer said, making Tom feel at ease.
‘No. And I hope we don’t, especially in this weather. If we did we’d have no chance of getting home.’ Tom saw the officer considering what he’d said, and didn’t believe him convincingly. He leaned closer to the car and spoke quietly so only the officer could hear him. ‘The truth is my wife and I had an argument not long before we saw you. She’s still pissed off at me.’
The officer glanced at Kate over Tom’s shoulder, and lowered his voice to a whisper, also. ‘What was the argument about?’ He looked at Tom’s rosy cheeks.
‘She didn’t want to risk driving today, and I did. Perhaps she’s right and I’m wrong - but she needed some air, so I pulled over.’
When Tom had originally told the officer they had stopped for a coffee he knew young man behind the wheel was aware that he wasn’t telling him the complete truth, if any truth. Yet he believed Tom about the argument, and not sleeping properly during the night. He could see the earnest expression on the man’s strained, haggard face.
‘Well, you did the best thing having some fresh air,’ the officer said. ‘A heated argument inside confide spaces isn’t good for anyone. If it does start to snow heavily again, though, I suggest you find somewhere safe to stop.
Hopefully you will be off the mountains before the next snowfall, though. The snowplough is making its way the mountain as we speak. Further down the roads are gritted, so you should be all right.’
‘Will do, officer,’ Tom said, standing upright again.
‘You take care now, both of you,’ the officer said, loud enough for Kate hear.
Then the patrol car began its slow, steady ascent up the winding road.
When the vehicle started to grow smaller in the distance from their position, Kate said, ‘What were you whispering about?’
When Tom lowered his voice to the policeman so she couldn’t hear him, she became fearful. For a moment, she thought Tom might tell the policeman about their hidden passenger.
‘I just said the real reason we stopped, was because we had an argument, and needed some fresh air to cool off. I told him we were arguing about whether or not we should be driving back home when the roads had only recently been gritted.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he didn’t believe the first explanation, that’s why, Kate. He’s a police officer. He can tell if someone’s lying to him or not. So, I told him a half- truth.’
Kate wouldn’t say so, but she was satisfied by Tom’s plausible explanation.
‘Are we taking the Frozen Man home, then?’ she asked.
Unbelievable! ‘It’s a corpse, Kate. A corpse. Nothing more. But, yes. Thanks to your stunt and nearly being caught by the police, I guess we haven’t got any other sensible options, do we?’
Kate didn’t answer. Instead she opened the passenger door and got in. When Tom got behind the wheel for the second time that morning, he said, ‘If we get caught though - I knew nothing, I saw nothing. I was totally unaware. The hiding of the dead body is your idea, not mine. Therefore you will take sole responsibility of it, understood?’
Kate nodded glumly.
‘I’ve done some dumb things over the years, Kate, but taking a corpse of a stranger home with us is no doubt the dumbest and most dangerous, by far.’
With that said, they gingerly made their way off the mountains and back towards home.
6
Tom and Kate lived in a semi-detached, red-brick home on newly constructed housing estate. Blossoming flowers cascaded out of the pot in the centre of the impeccably groomed front lawn. The two-car garage was interconnected beside the house, creating more space for both cars to fit on the driveway. Tom swung the Vauxhall passed the bricked pillar onto the driveway alongside Kate’s Ford.
He killed the engine, removed the seatbelt and sat quietly, listening to the constant pounding of his heart. Kate hadn’t made any motion to get out of the car, either.
‘You know, it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom you know,’ she said, as though people drove around the country with dead bodies in the boot of their cars every day.
‘Please... do me a favour, Kate. Knock it off, would ya? My head’s thumping.’
She heaved in exasperation. ‘I’m just trying to help you.’
‘No you’re not. You’re just trying to justify what you’ve done.’
Kate sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment.
The engine ticked.
Tom removed the set of keys from the ignition for the garage door from his Levi’s and handed it to his wife, grudgingly. She took it off him in her sweaty palm and climbed out of the car. As he watched her amble over to the garage, shoulders slumped, Tom felt like he was staring at a whole new person. He really thought he knew how Kate’s mind worked - but that was clearly not the case. Who is that woman?
Once the door had been lifted open, Tom rolled the Vauxhall into the dim garage. Then he turned the engine off again. Kate closed the garage door shut.
She flicked the switch for the light bulb to come on. Tom got out of the vehicle.
When he slammed the door closed, the ambient sound bounced off the walls.
Here we fuckin’ go, he thought, dreading what would inevitably follow. His brain felt like a soaked sponge - leaden with guilt. He tossed the keys to Kate, hoping she would drop them; surprisingly though, she caught them one-handed.
Then he stared at her as she lifted the lid of the boot. There wasn’t any turning back from this now, he thought. What he and Kate did next would be irrevocable. He wanted to cry and beg with Kate to change her mind. Yet even if he did, his efforts would be futile. Kate was adamant about keeping the frozen cadaver in their home, and nothing he could say or do would change her mind.
Tentatively, Tom strolled around the car where Kate stood and gazed at the preserved, ashen body again, wanting to puke his guts up. The thin carpet in the boot was soaked. The block of ice, as he expected had begun to melt, already.
Tom groaned. Kate didn’t seem to hear it, or if she did she was too concerned and engrossed by the ungodly sight before her.
‘Maybe we should wait for the ice to melt before carting it up to the loft. What do you reckon?’
‘I dunno, Kate. It’s your corpse, you do what ever you want. It’s got nothing to do with me’.
She still hadn’t peeled her eyes away from the body. ‘Yeah,’ she said, answering her own question, as if she were here, alone. ‘I think we should wait until the ice has melted. It’ll weigh far less and there won’t be any leaking through the floorboards, either.’
Two concrete steps leading to a white door gave access to the pantry. Beyond the pantry was another door to the right, which opened into the kitchen. Tom climbed the steps, removed his keys, unlocked the pantry door and entered his home. He was only slightly reassured by the familiar sight. His home, where he relaxed and could enjoy himself away from the stresses of work would no longer be the comfortable place it used to be. Whenever he looked into Kate’s sparkling green eyes, they wouldn’t sooth his soul, they would remind him that there was a corpse stashed away in his garage.
In spite of what Kate had said, their life would never be like it had been. There would always be that irksome worry of the corpse in the back of their minds, whether or not they wanted to admit it to themselves out loud. He and Kate were no longer two innocent human beings living a mundane life. They would never be able to bring a child into the world (even if it was possible), not with that ‘thing’ in the stashed in their garage.
Tom opened the cupboard of the bureau, took an empty glass from the top shelf and poured himself a drink. Then he walked over to the sofa and collapsed in the corner by the arm. He was exhausted. Not just from the long drive, but from the constant worrying. He didn’t even want to look at or talk to Kate for a while. All he wanted was to pretend everything was fine and normal. He sat in his favourite place on the sofa with a glass of beer and watched Manchester United beat Chelsea convincingly on the TV. For a while the cadaver in the garage slipped into the back of his mind, temporarily, while he enjoyed the game. Nevertheless, when the game had finished his dreaded thoughts returned to the forefront, gnawing at his conscience.
When Tom came back into the kitchen he saw Kate at the dinette table reading an article in a woman’s magazine. She appeared to be relaxed, as if everything was how is should be. He placed the glass in the sink, leaned on the porcelain and gazed out the window at the back lawn still covered in a thin layer of frost.
‘So, what now?’ he asked.
Kate looked up from the paper. ‘Pardon?’
‘I said - what now?’
‘You mean about the corpse?’
Tom rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, Kate. Or have you forgotten about it already?’
‘Well, what do you wanna do about it?’
‘I want to take back to the place we found it, that’s what I want. But being rational isn’t an option with you any more, so I thought I’d better ask, seen as though it’s your corpse.’
‘I turned the thermostat on. Now all we have to do is wait for the ice to melt before hauling it up into the loft.’
Tom moved away from the sink and faced his wife, and said, ‘Kate, why don’t you sleep on it before deciding what you’re gonna do with that thing. I mean this is a life-changing decision, in case you hadn’t noticed. If you choose to keep the corpse, there’s no turning back afterwards, if you have a change of hear
t. You know what I mean?’
Kate flipped the page she’d been reading over to the front cover and folded the magazine up. ‘I did sleep on it, Tom. I thought about it all night long.’
She must do her contemplating in her sleep, then, Tom thought and almost said it out loud.
‘I know you don’t believe the story,’ Kate went on, ‘and that’s fine, I suppose.
But I do. And I wanna keep it. I believe we’ll be doing the right thing for everyone.’
Tom lowered his head and muttered, ‘Look, it’s not that I think Charles lied or anything like that. I enjoyed the story. But its one thing to enjoy a story and it’s another to hide a dead body on your property. Surely you can understand that if nothing else?’
‘Yes you liked the story, Tom. You didn’t believe the story, though, did you?’
Tom threw his arms up in the air in disdain. ‘I can’t even discuss this with you. You’re impossible.’
‘Will you help me carry the body up the loft?’ Kate said, as he was about to stride out of the room.
‘If I do,’ he said, staring at her, ‘it’ll be the last favour I do for you.
‘Thanks,’ she said. Then stood up and put the magazine in the rack in the corner of the room.
Tom trudged up the staircase, threw himself on top of the mattress and buried his face into the pillow. Too many emotions raced through him, like Formula One cars on a racing track. Confusion; devastation; nervousness; melancholy, and bewilderment buzzed through him. He thought his head would explode.
Kate had said ‘thanks’ to him instantly, after he’d answered her question. She didn’t seem concerned one iota when he said it would be the last favour he’d do for her. All that mattered to Kate now was the Frozen Man. He could see them both, in his mind’s eye, being cuffed by the police on their drive, as the cadaver got wrapped up in a black body bag and wheeled into the back of the coroner’s van sometime in the foreseeable future. Then he and Kate would be folded into separate patrol cars and taken to the police station where they would be interrogated separately.
